My feelings of discovery while playing started beautifully, as I leveled a nelf Druid on launch and the first runes were strategically positioned around quests and areas that felt like they belong, like I can’t imagine the game never having them. They feel interconnected and interesting. Well, that feeling vanishes when my characters leave the starting zones and journey into level 20+.
I think Blizzard knocked the starting zone runes out of the park where runes are easily discovered by the players and apparent. However, dozens of runes which require us to travel from kalimdor to eastern kingdoms back and forth SEVERAL times is such a drag that it becomes a chore. Everyone just looks them up online for a guide. It’s season of google. Some of these runes are ridiculous and frustrating. I’m hoping if they stick with runes in Classic Plus, that this excessive travel is minimized or at least a second hearthstone is introduced as no one wants to spend hours on zeppelins or boats every day.
Please make interesting faction/race based runes depending on location, for example, night elf’s and orcs have a ton of opportunity as the two major cities are close, why not send the night elf players on missions to kill some random horde npcs in the barrens! That sounds like a lot of fun. For the love of god blizzard please we want you to buff ALL PROFESSION CRAFTED ITEMS so being a blacksmith at a low level or leather worker is nearly BIS rather than useless grey items that are only good for the vendor. (The epic craftable items are nice but way too convoluted)
As the players need to use boats and zepps, how about introduce a brawlers guild of some sort on boats to keep it interesting and make it feel like the world is alive. I wish that more runes would be centered around fighting / war and elite quests / missions rather than just walking from point a to b back and forth 10 times for your rune!